


birds of a feather

by Loverofchimkem



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Wingfic, and a bit of angst, but its mostly fluff, i think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-26 00:12:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14390043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loverofchimkem/pseuds/Loverofchimkem
Summary: The raven’s wings were similar in shape to an actual raven’s and were such a deep black it could be easy to forget about them completely in the dark. In the light they constantly shifted through a rainbow of colors depending on how the light hit them, foiling Yusukes occasional attempts to immortalize them in paint, or they would be if he took care of themorakira is too stressed to take care of himself so Ryuji takes care of him instead.





	birds of a feather

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don't know what this is or how it got to what it is.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it anyway and have a nice day/night!

Ryuji sometimes couldn’t help but stare at his best friend’s wings.

That’s not to say he wasn’t proud of his own pair of long swift like wings, the opposite, in fact, the blond considered them to be one of his best attributes. The blond made sure to take time to make sure that every feather was free of dirt and dust and that not a one was out of place.

Even so, there was no denying the obvious, Akira's wings were nothing short of breathtaking.

 The raven’s wings were similar in shape to an actual raven’s and were such a deep black it could be easy to forget about them completely in the dark. In the light they constantly shifted through a rainbow of colors depending on how the light hit them, foiling Yusukes occasional attempts to immortalize them in paint.

One of the few flaws that could be seen on them was the fact that the primary feathers that should have been long and just as captivating as the rest had been clipped short, a requirement for anyone on parole or probation to keep them from simply flying away, effectively grounding the teen.

The other flaw was that Akira was terrible at taking care of them, which was probably a side effect of his poor self-care abilities in most other areas, the blond didn’t care how good the curry was there’s no way it's healthy to eat it almost exclusively.

It normally wasn’t too noticeable, an out of place feather here or some dirt build up there, but now that the raven had begun molting it became clearer and clearer with every day that Akira feathers lost their more of their shine and his wings lost more of their feathers, that the other wasn’t doing nearly enough preening, which Ryuji knew, was a really eff’in good way to get oneself sick.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand, he knew that being on probation; living with the knowledge that if he made one mistake he’d be thrown into juvie couldn’t be easy, and the stress of having to lead the phantom thieves knowing, Ryuji, Ann, and Morgan had put their vary lives in his hands, that one mistake, one slip of the tongue and they would all likely end up dead with no one in the real world ever knowing what had happened, well if the blond looked at it that way then everything made perfect sense.

Akira was and was spending all his emery double checking to make sure he wasn’t stepping too far out of line and worrying about everyone else, that he had nothing left when it came to worrying about himself.

It was with that that the blond took it upon himself to do something about the situation.

The next day Ryuji found himself paying even less attention than he normally did in class his attention evenly split between watching the clock and checking his phone. The blond had sent Akira a text asking to meet up on the roof after school ended and the other teen had yet to respond, not that that was anything unusual the ravens texting habits were _almost_ as atrocious as his hygiene. Half the time all you could do was wait to see if he would show up or not, but it seemed that fate had smiled upon him this day as a few minutes before the final bell rang he got a text from Akira confirming that he would be on the roof.

When the bell finally went off, the blond made a mad dash for the door managing to be one of the first out of the room and circumventing most of the lunch rush as he wove his way through the rapidly growing crowd.

He was, unsurprisingly, the first one to make it to the roof, which was perfect as it gave him a good head start on clearing out an area big enough for Akira to stretch his wings out.

It took a few minutes and more than a few precariously stacked tables before he was happy with the amount of space he had created. And just in time too, as not a minute after he finished pushing the last desk into a corner, did a familiar fluffy head of hair emerge from behind the doorway. Sauntering in with his usual blank expression, an expression that quickly turned to one of confusion as he took in the new seating arrangement.

“why?”

Choosing to ignore the others question, for the time being, Ryuji simply walked behind his friend and guided him to the center of the newly formed ring of desks before prompting Akira to lay down on his stomach, which the raven did curious to see what the blond had planned.

“I noticed lately that you weren’t taking care of your wings, so, I decided I’d give you a helping hand,” Ryuji explained as he carefully maneuvered his friends wings so that they were fully extended and frowned as he felt just how dry and brittle the feathers that hadn’t already fallen away were.

“you don-“

“I know I don’t have to,” the blond interrupted, honestly, trying to get Akira to accept help was like pulling teeth sometimes, “I want to.”

Apparently, the knowledge that Ryuji was doing this of his own free will was enough to put a stop to the raven’s argument.

seeing that Akira had accepted his fate Ryuji kneeled in front of the wing that happened to be nearest him, properly situated the blond began a quick inspection to see exactly how back his friend’s situation was. The most obvious problems were the areas where feathers had already fallen out but, because of the lack of preening the sheaths protecting the pin feathers that were supposed to replace the old ones hadn’t been removed, preventing them from growing correctly. In a few spots the pin feathers had actually managed to become ingrown, irritating the skin around them, likely causing an annoying itchy sensation. Luckily it appeared that none of them had gotten infected, yet which was one less thing for the blond to worry about.

Aside from removing those few ingrown feathers, it didn’t look like Akira required any special treatment to get his wings back into tip-top shape.

Deciding that it would be best to deal with the shedding feathers before moving onto the pin feathers, Ryuji began running his finger through the dull back feather an action that served to both dislodge any feather that was ready to come out and move those that weren’t back into their proper places.

Ryuji worked quickly and thoroughly feeling Akira relax more and more as time went on.

Thirty minutes one now full trash bag later Ryuji had finished with both wings and already he could see a slight difference now that all the molted feathers where gone.

“Hey, Akira,”

“yeah.”

“I’m about to start removing your ingrown feathers, it’ll probably be a bit uncomfortable, ill try to be quick.”

“k.” Ryuji started smiling despite himself. It was rare to see his leader so relaxed, even on the rare occasions when nothing was out to get them, and they didn’t need to worry about expulsions, or getting sued, again in Akira's case, the raven always kept at least a few of his defenses up, always prepared for the next time this started to crash and burn around him.

that thought alone wiped the smile from his face and made the blond both sad and incredibly angry. He began mentally cursing whatever deity had decided to make Akira their personal punching bag because Akira was kind and selfless, and despite everything he had already gone through he was still determined to do good and to help people and he deserved so much better than the shitty ass hand he’d been dealt.

With renewed determination to get this part done and over with as quickly as possible, Ryuji set to work.

With the exception of a few particularly stubborn feathers the process was done with quickly, and after cleaning the area with some water he moved onto the final step, freeing the new feathers from their keratin entrapment.

This was honestly Ryuji’s favorite part of preening. All you had to do was pinch the tip of the pin feather, slide the sheath off as you watch a brand-new feather be uncovered then rinse and repeat until you’re done. A lot of people found the process repetitive and time-consuming, and as such disliked having to do it themselves. It was something that the blond just couldn’t understand at all, he found the repetitive motions relaxing in enjoyed having all that free time to think about whatever he wanted, it probably also helped that the feeling of the sheath sliding off the new feather was rivaled only by the slight burning feeling in his muscles after a good work out.

And it seemed like Akira was inclined to agree if the way he somehow managed to relax _even more_ and occasionally let out little-pleasured sighs was any indication.

The more Ryuji worked the less and less often those sighs came until they stopped coming all together. it wasn’t until he was almost halfway done that Ryuji noticed that Akira had fallen asleep on the roof of the school.

 After making that discovery the blond picked up his pace slightly, not wanting to wake his friend yet, but at the same time wanting to finish as quickly as possible so that Akira could get off the floor faster.

 Soon enough the last feather was free and Ryuji was gently shaking the raven's shoulder in an attempt to rouse him from his slumber.

“come on buddy, time to get up”

“don’t want to”

Ryuji spent a few minutes cursing his best friend’s stubbornness.

“If we don’t leave soon, well be stuck here overnight,” he figured an appeal to Akira's logical side would help win him over.

“don’t care”

Apparently not.

The blond spent a few minutes trying to lift Akira onto his feet, but the raven was especially talented at mimicking a bag of bricks and all Ryuji ha managed to do was somehow get himself trapped beneath Akira. At which point he gave trying to wake the other and figured that as long as he was bodily trapped under Rome, he might as well do as the Romans do, and fell asleep shortly after.

 Makoto was not happy when she found them the following day.


End file.
